


Paint me an adventure

by jestbee



Series: Fic Every Day in June 2018 [6]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Humor, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Pining, The Sims 4, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 20:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14921909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Dab makes up entire worlds for them, but all they need is each other





	Paint me an adventure

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. 
> 
> I don't even know why this happened. I was rewatching the Sims 4 series because I was working on a project for my friends and I needed to check a fact and then I had like, a brief moment of absolute madness. When I looked up I had 2000 words of Devan in a sort-of-realistic setting. 
> 
> I don't know. 
> 
> Don't ask. 
> 
>  
> 
> I feel like this is me losing all integrity. Fedij has finally made me snap.

Dab has too much homework. It's sat on his desk in a huge pile, staring at him as he squints down at his sketchbook. His fingers are covered in charcoal, and the drawing on the page isn't anything like he'd wanted it to be. 

He sighs. He doesn't want to do his homework, and he obviously can't draw anything today. He's restless under his skin, he keeps thinking of a few days ago, far away from here, when he'd been camping with Evan. 

It hadn't been anything special, but they'd made it in to their own adventure. He remembers laying in the tent, stars above them covered by the thin roof of sheer material and making up stories about exploring ancient ruins and plundering treasure chests. 

Sometimes Dab wants to run away, his head is filled with so many fanciful notions that aren't anywhere near possible, and he tries to jot them down or put them on canvas but it never pans out quite right. So he's said them to Evan, telling him tales of things they could be doing, of what would happened. It went on and on, strange jungles, animals attacks, walking skeletons. He didn't even know where it came from, but Evan stared at him the whole way through, captivated, believing every word. They were there, or they might as well have been, rather than in this cheap tent for a few stolen days away without their parents.

Evan thinks he's crazy, he probably always has, and not just because he can conjure wild, imaginative scenery with just some words whispered into the darkness. 

It's no use, he's not going to get anything done today. He stands from his desk and crosses the room to his jukebox, filling the space with something angsty and slow. It's too loud, and his mum will probably bang on the ceiling soon, or else come straight up to turn it off herself. 

The room had been a surprise, his parents springing it on him when he returned from his trip. It's supposed to be his own space, which is great, and he likes that he doesn't have to hear whatever weird stuff his brother used to get up to in the next room, but it feels like too much growing up sometimes. The decor is all different. He still has his frog and the pictures of Evan above his dresser, but his old toys are gone, and the god awful wallpaper he'd had before has been swapped for different wallpaper that is still awful, just in a different way. 

The room still makes him feel uneasy. His gaze drifts over to the couch and recalls what happened last time Evan was here, about what he'd said. 

"I like you," he'd said. "I really like you." 

Which was fine, even though his chest felt like it was bursting open from letting out something he'd kept inside for so long. 

They're best friends, is the thing. And whatever has happened, however many times he's held Evan's hand and ghosted his lips over the bump of his knuckles it still doesn't feel like anything permanent.Even if he'd kissed him bathed in moonlight, it might just have been part of the story, he doesn't know. So he'd had to say something, hadn't he? 

But then Evan hadn't replied and he'd tried to play it off as a joke, tipping him backwards and planting a huge kiss right on his mouth. He can get away with it when it's like that. When it's just Dab being wild and crazy like he always is, Evan is used to that. 

Evan is used to all kinds of things. His mum and her penchant for talking to his brother's toys, and the way Dalien pretends he's from outer space. Evan even puts up with his dad and his peculiar outfits and the room they aren't allowed to go into by the front door. 

Evan puts up with all of it, despite being the type of guy that worries about just about everything. Dab isn't something he worries about, not when he's just being Dab, playing by the rules and sticking to the role he's always had. Best friend.

But then Dab had to go and make everything complicated. The joke had faded and they'd both been upright again and then everything that had started on that camping trip had bubbled up and over. Evan had been here, his brown creased and serious and Dab had thrown caution to the wind, led him by the hand to the bed and he thinks something might have happened. It would. 

Dab doesn't know whether it's a good thing they were interrupted when his mum came upstairs. He doesn't know what would have happened in that bed, or worse yet what would have happened after that. It's killing him that he doesn't know. He kind of wants to find out. 

The music is still playing but Dab shrugs into his jacket and leaves his room. There's no door for him to close on his way so there's nothing to give away to his parents that he's leaving. They might not even notice anyway. 

It's a short distance across the road, and his feet take him there before he has even had time to think about it. He's lost count of how many times he's trekked this way over the years, he's surprised there is no path worn in the tarmac from his own wandering feet. 

Mrs Pancakes answers the door with a tea towel in her hand. 

"Hello Dab," she says, throwing the door wide. 

"Hello Mrs Pancakes, is Evan in?" 

"He's upstairs. I've told you Dab, you can call be Eliza." 

She has told him. A few times. But it feels wrong, so he'll never do it. 

"How are your parents?" she asks. 

"They're fine," Dab says, even though he has no idea really how they are. They're probably fine. There hasn't been any fires lately, and there are only minor explosion noises coming from his Dad's secret room so all is about as well as it ever is. 

"Alright then, go on up." 

Dab makes his way upstairs, another route he could probably do with his eyes closed. He knocks lightly on Evan's door and lets himself in before Evan's quiet voice tells him to. 

He's sat at his desk, he's got a glass vial in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. 

"Homework?" Dab asks. 

Evan shakes his head and squints a little more at the vial like it isn't doing what it's supposed to. 

"I can't believe you're doing science for fun you weirdo. Absolute nerd." 

His voice is too fond, he needs to knock it off. 

Evan gives the vial one last shake and then gives up, putting it down and turning to Dab. 

"You alright?" he asks. 

He's always asking that, or at least he is when Dab doesn't want to talk about it.

"M'fine." 

"Come on," Evan says, shifting from his seat. 

He's set Dab with a gaze that says he doesn't believe him, but that he isn't going to ask anymore if that isn't what Dab wants. Chances are he knows what this is about anyway, what else could it be?

Evan opens the balcony door and steps out. It's already dark. Dab wonders what Evan's parents think about him coming over so late all the time. He follows Evan out into the inky darkness and leans on the railing. 

"Sorry," Dab says, not turning his head to look at Evan who has come to lean on the rail next to him. 

They're pressed close, even though there's really no need for them to be. Dab looks over at his own house, to the lights in the windows that feel so far away yet so suffocatingly close all at once. It's like another world over there, and in the house behind them. Here, on the balcony, they've got their own little universe, just for a little while. 

"What for?"

"For..." Dab sighs. "Last time." 

Evan nudges him with his shoulder. "What about last time?" 

"I shouldn't have... I mean I'm glad, I wanted to... but I shouldn't have." 

"I wanted to as well," Evan says, quietly. "It wasn't just you." 

Dan straightens up then, turning his body so that he's looking at him dead on. 

"I meant what I said," Dab says, with a surge of bravery.

"What about?" 

Evan stands too. They're still too close, and Evan is warm and Dab is taken back to that night on their trip. The dark of the tent and the crazy story they'd made up. He thinks of kissing Evan, his lips soft and gentle. 

"About liking you," Dab breathes. "About all of it. I meant it." 

Evan blinks, his lips parting just slightly. 

"I know we've known each other forever. I know that we were just making up stories, and we got caught up in the stupid fiction of temples and adventures and a load of fake bullshit I came up with on the spot. And it was probably just a moment of madness for you... kissing me. But it wasn't for me. It was..." 

He trails off. He doesn't know what it was, it felt like something that was always meant to happen, like another natural step born from everything that had come before. At least, for him. 

"Dab..." Evan says, reaching out and sliding his fingers in between Dab's. 

"Don't. I know." 

Dab kicks his shoe against the bottom of the railing and lets Evan hold his hand. 

"You don't know," Evan says, finally. "You don't know anything." 

Dab lifts his head and makes to say something back but Evan cuts him off. 

"You're crazy," he says. "I literally never know what you're going to say from one minute to the next."

Dab feels his face heat up with how true that is. Sometimes he doesn't even know what he'll do, it's like his brain is racing a million miles an hour faster than he is, like someone somewhere is pulling the strings of his life and Dab just has to go along with it.

"I'm not like that." Evan says, which is true. "I worry... about everything. And I'm too sensible most of the time and I just try to do everything I'm supposed to when I'm supposed to do it. That night..." 

He takes a breath and there's space for Dab to interrupt him if he wants to, and he usually would, except Evan's eyes are set hard and determined and Dab needs to leave him room to do this. He tightens his fingers a little bit instead, urging him on. 

"That night you were saying all these things, describing something completely mad but I could _see_ it. I could see the lake and the temple and the stupid golden statue thing." 

"Relic," Dab says. 

"Exactly. You just... you come up with all of this out of nowhere like it's nothing, and that makes me feel like... like maybe you saying you like me is just another flight of fancy, you know?" 

"But it isn't--" 

"It would kill me," Evan says. "If... If you said that and then we... if you turned around later and changed your mind. I'm not impulsive. I don't do things spur of the moment." 

"Evan." 

Evan shakes his head but swipes his thumb across the top of Dab's knuckles. 

"It isn't spur of the moment," Dab says, "Not for me. It's... I've felt like this for..." 

"For?" 

"For...ever." Dab says, "I can't... I can't remember what it's like to not want to be with you. It's just... fits. You've always been there, my whole life. I can't imagine myself with anyone else." 

Evan loosens his fingers, sliding them up to Dab's cheek, flicking a piece of unruly hair of his forehead before running a thumb over his cheekbone. 

"Me too," he says. "I... I like you too."

"Okay then," Dab says, and kisses him.


End file.
